The madman and the box
by donquichotte
Summary: Short, unrelated one-shots.
1. Where is she?

Character/events don't belong to me.

As soon as it was clear that Idris was actually the TARDIS, I kept hoping for some mention of Rose. But to no avail... so I wrote it myself.

oO*Oo

"Where is my pink-and-yellow one?" Sexy asks abruptly, "My Valiant Child – she fit better." A pale hand trails down the woman's blue-clad body. "Of course she did. We created her for me. Where is she?"

"Gone. She's…gone." Her thief sounds so very sad.

"Oh. Oh, yes. That's where we are. It's hard to tell with her. So wrapped up in paradox. She shines like the stars. The Bad Wolf. Doctor, she is returning."

The shadows carve deep crags into her thief's worn face.

"No, that's already happened, too."

"Are you quite sure?" She could have sworn…

He nods heavily.

"Oh. I miss her."

"Me too."

"I would have shared her with you," she offers.

Her thief chokes.


	2. Where angels fear to tread

As usual, I don't own Doctor who

oO*Oo

He's never been to the spiral citadel of Auria, nor the Rainbow Peninsula of Epsilene II, nor so many other places like them, renowned in story and song, lauded as beacons of peace and prosperity and beauty. He's always running towards danger, throwing himself into wars and revolutions and madcap rescues. He unerringly, almost eagerly, faces the darkest creatures in the cosmos (_yes, even himself_) and wanders to the most dangerous corners of the Universe. He lives and breathes for the terror and excitement of the chase.

But those havens, those pinnacles of civilisation, he cannot bring himself to visit. He's been tempted, because surely, _surely_, he could catch a break, could relax and enjoy a few hours of calm. But he won't. He's the Oncoming Storm, with trouble and chaos snapping at his heels like thought and memory, and he can't pollute such purity with his crimes and his grief and his burdens.

He might have dared, once upon a time, when he was younger, when it was all a game, when the years weren't pressing down on him like solitude (_or maybe it was the solitude pressing down like years_). But now? Now when he is stained with the blood of so so so so many (_not just his own – his _own –_ people, but so many more, before and since_) and his mistakes tear holes in reality?

Now, he doesn't dare.


	3. Absolution

disclaimer: okay, doctor who is still not mine

Sort of an AU of "The Doctor's Wife", if there _had_ been Time Lords that survived. I kind of want to elaborate (i.e. how this would change other events of the episode/series), but I fear that I don't have the stamina...

oO*Oo

He can hear them, so so many voices, filling up that void in his mind and even their terror and pain doesn't diminish the easing of the ache of emptiness.

_I'm coming, _he thinks, _I'm coming; where are you?_ He's not actually projecting, so they can't hear him, but they answer nonetheless.

_I'm here! I'm here! I'm here!_ chants a female voice on the edge of hysteria.

_I'm still alive!_ intones the Corsair.

_Help, _breathes a pleasant alto.

All the words and voices that add up to one simple message, the message he could never resist.

_Save us._

He's running, now, through the dark corridors, sprinting. Extending the sonic, he scans for life forms. There! Behind that door is all that's left of his people.

It's locked, of course. Further scans show that it is in fact a semi-stable dimensional portal triple dead-lock sealed and isomorphically locked, with quantum bindings.

He's never believed in impossible, really, and fifteen minutes, four minor explosions and a Garavian hair dryer later, he is extending one slightly singed hand to the handle of a grimy metal door.

And then they are there, thirty-two gloriously real and incredibly alive Time Lords. Dirty, half starved, obviously long-time captives, but with that familiar, deep-seated pride in their eyes.

They recognise him as one of their own and he feels their minds brush against his barriers, feels their puzzlement as he refuses contact.

_I can't. I can't. I can't._

"What news of the War, General?"

His old, hated title, branded into his timelines for all to see. Opening his mouth to reply, he finds his throat too tight to produce words (he doesn't know what he would have said, anyways). Mute, he looks upon their determined, drawn faces.

"Doctor?" The voice is female, husky and incredulous. As the speaker moves to the front of the crowd, he looks over her unfamiliar face. He meets her dark eyes and there is something, some quirk of personality, in them that strikes him like a blow.

_Romana._

It is the final straw and just like that he falls to his knees, weeping, his head in his hands. Time Lords are not given to intense emotions and he can feel their confusion and discomfort at his display, but he is already halfway to hysterical and unlikely to turn back now. It is Romana, of course, who breaks the tableau and moves to embrace him, running gentle fingers through his hair as he sobs into her shoulder.

After a few minutes he regains enough control to pull away and swipe a sleeve across his face.

"If you've recovered, _General_," the tone is scathing and Romana frowns angrily at the speaker, "we need to know the state of affairs."

He stands to look the man in the eyes.

"There is no War. There was never a War, not now."

"But –"

"Time-locked.

"Gallifrey?"

"Gone."

He lets them see now, what he had been hiding: his choice, his burden. The push of a button and the fire. The screams of the dying on both sides.

They recoil – all of them, even Romana.

Of course; how stupid to think of forgiveness.

Now that he's started, he can't stop and the years since that final resolution begin pouring out of him in a torrent.

Loneliness, a paralysing isolation, grief, nightmares. The hope he'd found in a pair of dark eyes and a hand to hold. The Daleks, returning time and time again. And more; memory after memory spilling into their stunned, horrified minds. When it's done, he is left panting, feeling empty and dazed.

There is a silence.

"The loss of Gallifrey and the Eye of Harmony is a great blow," one of the older men says finally in what is probably the biggest understatement ever made. "I cannot sanction your actions, Doctor, but to know the Time War is ended brings an easing to me."

Not forgiveness, no, but acceptance. Understanding.

"That sounds almost like sympathy," spits another Time Lord angrily, "for a _murderer._ Even before the War, he was an interfering menace, but _this_, this cannot be let stand. He must be punished. Severely."

"Silence, Rindan! He did what was necessary. What, perhaps, no other would have been able to do. Doctor, I salute you."

They all speak, some furious, some accepting, most just bewildered. In the end, it comes down to the fact that he has the only working TARDIS left, and that he is very good at surviving insurmountable danger. They are with him, for now, at least until they are out of the bubble universe.

He is not forgiven, but he is hopeful. He likes hope.


	4. Eternity in an hour

She sees everything, she _is_ everything. Was everything. Is-was-will be-might be. She is the coalescence of all the moments of time, every event, every possibility, every path.

But for her, there is only one beginning.

The paradox is beautiful, a twisted loop, folded back on itself, spinning out through time and space. With one glimmer of intention, she will create herself, and in so doing, she will shape the Universe. She reaches out and plants life in a womb that was not meant to carry fruit. It is such a simple thing, the joining of these cells, of these atoms. And yet, she tastes the deliciously intricate web of causality spreading from that one action. Because this life, this small human life, has left the Earth and her actions will be felt, rippling through eons. And one day, she was sent home, and she will come back, and she is coming back, and she will save them, the Doctor, her Doctor, and Jack, lonely Jack, who will live and live and live. There is sadness in that, in what must be done. That sadness is why Rose Tyler is needed – the human emotion, sadness and pity and compassion and love, so much love that she is spilling over with it. So much love that it binds the endless power of the Bad Wolf.

Somewhere, somewhen, the tiny fragment of consciousness that is Rose Tyler, clinging to individuality amidst the howling rush of golden eternity, understands her purpose: there is no Rose Tyler without the Doctor. She was created to save him, born for him, to love him enough to turn a monster into a goddess.

She does not fail.


	5. Just passing through

Traveling by Dimension Cannon is unpleasant, to say the least. They'd expected some discomfort, obviously – being de-molecularised and then hurled through the world barriers and re-constituted can't exactly be considered first-class travel – but, as it turns out, universe hopping is a three-step operation: jump from world A to the Void, let Cannon recalibrate, jump to world B. She'd panicked the first time, and jumped without waiting for calibration. Not an experience she's eager to repeat. (By some miracle, she'd managed to get home with the help of a depressed and sarcastic Doctor and his sociopathic android 'frenemy', but that's another story entirely.)

When the Doctor had explained it to her, Rose had pictured the Void as a white room, a huge, empty, featureless white room. Of course, she was completely wrong – the human mind just isn't equipped to deal with the concept of absolute nothing (she suspects she's no longer quite human, but maybe she's just mad). _The Howling_, he'd also said, and that description is a little better, a little more encompassing of the staggering vacuum.

She's almost used to it by now, after so many trips. It has no dimension, this non-space, at once a macrocosm and a microcosm, and she'll never be able to say if it's light or dark. It simply _is_, existing without any definition. And it is completely empty.

Except when it's not.

A few times, she's caught some wisp of awareness passing by her, some bit of _something_ in the nothing. But they seem…distant. Only not distant so much as discrete – they are not analogous to her. _Like comparing apples and oranges,_ says the voice of a long-ago maths teacher.

There is something in her frame of reference, now. She can feel its presence, tired and yearning and tentative.

_What are you?_ The voice in her head is male, cultured, British.

"I'm Rose Tyler." It's not really an answer, she knows (she doesn't have the answer, though something deep inside whispers _Bad Wolf_). "Who are you?"

_In the mortal world, I was once known as Mariner. It would…please me to use that name once again._

There is a silence, short and searching and tense.

_You are mortal, and yet there is something about you that is…not. You shine unlike anything else in the Howling; you are so bright, so _alive. _I can almost feel the light in you. _

In Rose's wide range of experience, that particular tone of voice generally means 'I'm hungry, and you look tasty'. Steeling herself for an attack, she readies the Cannon – it's nearly done calibrating.

_You're frightened. _He sounds surprised. _I mean you no harm._

"Okay, yeah, heard that one before."

_You misunderstand my motives. My kind, we have no life_;_ we merely exist, Eternal, banished to the Howling. To be in your presence is…a delight._

He studies her then. She can feel it. She can feel him take her image and fold it up, only to stretch it out again in a new way, so he can examine every possible angle of her, every hidden facet.

_There is a word about you, _he says finally, _a word pounding in your heart and your mind and through your veins and your thoughts._

"What word?" She knows, of course: what else could it be but –

_Doctor._

"I'm looking for him," she says, for no reason. Calibration is done, but her finger hesitates on the trigger.

_When you find him, you may tell him that I am…sorry for what transpired at our last meeting. It was not what I intended._

"Yeah, alright," Rose tells him, not even surprised (well, maybe a little; old acquaintances of the Doctor aren't usually looking to apologize).

She fires the cannon, and the world fades in from nothingness.


End file.
